


Terminal Degree

by ashtopop



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, Fluff and Angst, References to Drugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-29
Updated: 2015-11-29
Packaged: 2018-05-03 22:24:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5309270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashtopop/pseuds/ashtopop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time she'd been a mentats girl herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Terminal Degree

Once upon a time she'd been a mentats girl herself, but she hadn't told him that. Before ghouls existed she’d been called one herself—deep, bruised eye sockets from fatigue and pupils large and black from the chems. Of course, everyone was taking mentats in med school—grape, orange, cherry popped like candy. After, she’d just… never stopped.

Mentats gave her the edge to manage the politicking housewives of Sanctuary Hills, rubbing her temples through neighborhood associations while Nate rested on his war laurels. Chems got her through the resentment and possibly Shaun’s conception, but once she found out she was pregnant she stopped.

Cold turkey wasn't like cold pizza, it turned out, which is the only kind of _cold_ she’d committed to for as long as she could remember. But that was before two hundred years as a popsicle.

Now it seems like the War was an inevitability. Then… the Vault-Tec representative had been only a blip on her radar in the face of doctor’s appointments, Nate’s dinner at the Veteran’s Hall and picking up dry cleaning. Then, she’d casually contemplated divorce while watching Codsworth—whom they both, Nate and her, knew was part of her grievance package—dust her magna cum laude diploma. She tried not to meet the accusatory eyes she saw dotted in the cursive of “ _medicinae doctor_.”

Now that resentment seemed like so much wasted time. How many times did she let Codsworth take care of Shaun, rather than getting up with him in the middle of the night? How many times did Nate smile at her and she shifted her eyes away? She hadn’t even talked to him about her ambitions, the political aspirations she’d assumed wouldn’t fit into the cookie cutter mold he had planned for their family.  One more thing to be swept under the rug, just like her military service.

She wondered if the ‘Wealth would kill her with a kind of bemused detachment. She felt no closer to finding Shaun. The Minutemen needed almost as much of her attention as he had as a newborn, but offered no new leads. The Railroad and Brotherhood of Steel were equally useless, but with the latter’s annoyingly black and white morality in a world colored by radiation and the arterial blood of survival. Even if she found him, what kind of mother would she be? Scav. Broke. Addict? Maybe not, she toed that line rather judiciously. 

Even if her med degree hadn’t burnt or fallen apart in the two hundred years she’d been gone, it was useless now. She felt like Virgil, fingers too big for the work he loved, former dexterity and intelligence totally wasted in the world he woke up in. And then there was Hancock.

If there was ever a wrench in her plans, it wasn’t the bombs—it was _him_. Post-war (God, she was like two hundred years older than him), chem-using, infuriatingly clever _him_. To whom she couldn’t speak more than a handful of words to or about without a schoolgirl blush rising on her cheeks.

“Are you sick?” she’d blurted out, the first time she met him. She wanted to claim it was uphill from there, but… well, it mostly wasn’t.

He was, unfortunately, fascinating. To have purposefully exposed himself to radiation (chasing a high, he claimed) was interesting enough, but that ghouls in general were immortal? She itched to take notes or develop a long-term study. Less willingly, she also itched to tear his red coat and tricorn hat off of him, sure the founding father whose persona he’d adopted had never looked so good in them in the portraits she’d seen.

And then there were the triggermen. Eavesdropping around the corner, she’d heard them speaking about her. Flattering, to be sure, that the scum of _Goodneighbor_ was concerned she might be after them—which she was—but it wasn’t just her they were talking about.

_"_ You harm a hair on her head, Hancock will _have_ yours.”

And, thus, the bar. And vodka—free “on account of her clearing out those warehouses for the boss.” She committed herself to sussing out her feelings with the time-honored tradition of drinking alone in a seedy bar until someone picked a fight or she got drunk enough to pick one herself.

Honestly, Psycho would have been better, but she hadn’t gotten around to HalluciGen for Fred yet, and the only other stash she knew of was in said ghoul’s office, so that was out. After she’d asked Whitechapel Charlie about the bowler hat, however, it seemed that the robot’s programming had determined it was time to cut her off.

“I demand to speak to your manager!” she joked, the false note in her voice followed up by her own laughter, if not anyone else’s. It was probably the wrong thing to say.

A hand on her shoulder made her jump, and she turned in her seat until she was surprised to find herself eye-to-eye with the very catalyst of her quest to drain the Third Rail dry or find herself trying.

“Looking for me?” Hancock asked, drink in hand. She hadn’t seen him come in. Damn.

“Looking for _you?”_ she shook her head. “I just came in to wet my throat,” she said, nodding at her glass.

“Really,” Hancock said. It wasn’t a question, so she kept her lips sealed shut. He offered her his elbow and she took it, other hand out for balance. She tilted her lips at him in a small smile and he returned it, leading her to his office. The Third Rail never closed, but it also wasn’t the most private of places. The people of Goodneighbor were at least as gossipy as the Diamond City folk, just less judgmental about it. There wasn’t much else to do in a time that didn’t have many books, any television, and only reruns of the Silver Shroud on the radio, she supposed.

He took her to the room that functioned as his office, two sofas facing each other and chems on every surface. She dropped onto one with a sigh, ignoring the dust that rose when she did. She looked around for Fahrenheit, but it seemed no one was in the office this late—just her and Hancock. She settled her head on the armrest, curling her legs against her butt. Hancock was silent, standing at the counter, his hands busy with something she couldn’t quite see around him. She heard the distinctive sound of metal on metal and looked up. When she realized he was only cleaning his gun, she burrowed further into the sofa for warmth. With how many others would she have taken his actions as a threat? Instead, her eyelids drooped.

He glanced back at her and nodded, to which she lifted one corner of her mouth sleepily. Warm drowsiness lapped at her like the tide, and she gave herself over to it willingly—safe.

She woke to the sight of her own stimpak track marks, head tucked into her elbow, and Hancock’s signature coat tucked around her.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is self-indulgent characterization crap and I am not happy with it but this is as close as it's getting to done and you made it down here so thanks for bearing with me :) for more self-indulgent ghoul love check out considermehacked on tumblr


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